Andy's Angle

Not every rural state is a "red state," and vice-versa. Even so, there is a strong correlation between red state sensibilities and America's Heartland; in other words, those rural states know as "fly-over country." As Real Clear Politics reports, lefties are trying to alter the Electoral College to disenfranchise these very states.

To understand what I mean, you first must understand the purpose of the Electoral College, which unless you study electoral politics, you most likely do not. The purpose of the Electoral College is to strike a balance between the relative power any given area of the country has in electing our President.

Contrary to common belief, the President is not directly elected by the people, but rather by the electors selected by the voters on election day. Each state is allotted a number of electors based on its Representation in Congress. That Representation, of course, is based on population. More populous states, naturally, have more electors, but smaller states are still represented. For the same reason the Congress has two chambers (to give the states equal footing in the Senate, but to maintain a measure of the broader population in general via the House), the Electoral College exists to balance the needs of the several states against the concentration of citizens in a few large states like New York and California.

Following President George W. Bush's election in 2000, liberal academics starting seriously pushing concepts on how to be rid of the College and instead elect the President based purely on the popular vote (Bush won the Electoral College, but Gore narrowly won the popular vote). Gore's advantage in the popular vote was earned in a few highly populated states, while President Bush won a majority of votes in more states across the country.

As RCP notes, shortly after the 2000 election "a college professor proposed an intriguing end-run around the Electoral College: each state would simply pledge its electors to the winner of the popular vote. The law would take effect only after states with 270 electoral votes passed the law."

Now a half-dozen states have passed such laws, with a few more like New York likely to follow suit. RCP points out the clear fact that "all these states have something in common: They are deep blue states that likely feel as if they were disenfranchised by the 2000 outcome." These states are also fairly well populated, as blue states tend to be. By voting to more or less bypass the Electoral College, these states are potentially disenfranchising their own voters, but as importantly are lending credence to a national effort to torch the College.

These efforts are not in the best interests of the Republic, and are certainly bad for rural America, red state or not.

Okay, so it's a sad day in Ohio. King James is packing up and heading to South Beach. Is he now the most hated sports figure in Ohio? Gary Jackson tells me that statistically speaking, Art Modell is still the most despised figure in Ohio sports history. He had some polling data to back him up.

I have a startling admission to make: I'm not all that disappointed. Here's why: while I feel for the true fans, and for the people in Cleveland in general, LeBron James leaving town may be the guy check the Cavaliers need to step up and seal the deal in the playoffs. If they couldn't do it last season (and one could argue that LeBron's performance left something to be desired), they need something intangible to put them over the top. That certain something might just be a little dose of reality: LeBron James is not, nor will he ever be, God brought to the basketball court.

Here's the second thing that most folks probably won't say today: sports fans need a nice tall glass of "wake up and get real." Sports figures, while exciting, energizing, potentially motivating, are just people. They are humans, and as Charles Barkley put it so infamously, not role models to be idolized. More to the point, LeBron should also be considered as "LeBron, Inc.," and one should assume that he will make rational decisions in his own self interest - NOT in the interests of any specific team, city, or state.

In this case, that means that LeBron's most rational move was moving to Miami. He's going to have a much nicer tax base in which to rake his multi-million dollar endorsement deals, and while reports indicate he's actually taking a pay cut on the court, his salary with the team is one of the smallest contracts he'll sign this year.

Likewise, it's in his best interest to actually win a championship, something he's been unable to do in seven seasons with the Cavs. For a player of his magnitude, there isn't much else to accomplish that doesn't involve winning a title somewhere. While I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that he'd have preferred to win it in his home town, great players have almost always had to make big moves to win big. Michael Jordan didn't grow up in the Windy City.

My friend Scott McKain has a great business perspective on this situation, most importantly how the reality of the James debacle relates to your business and loyalty.

A final, somewhat related thought: I'm tired of hearing all the moaning about the "big money" in sports, both at the collegiate and professional levels. At the end of the day, players play to earn a living. While their salaries in a single game may eclipse the yearly income of many of their fans, that is irrelevant. The market will bear a fair price for a given set of talents and abilities, and in the case of professional athletes, that figure is often tens of millions of dollars.

With that in mind, how many of those fans have ever left a job, career, or employeer they really enjoyed or respected to take more money somewhere else? A WHOLE LOT of them!! If it's okay for you and me to consider improving our circumstances by accepting a "better" position somewhere else, why hold elite athletes to a less reasonable standard?

This is similar to my position on college athletes turning pro early. Take the example of Greg Oden: Oden could have potentially won a National Title for Ohio State with another year or two under his belt. OR, he could have blown his knees out and never played the first minute of professional ball. As stands now, he signed a good deal while he was healthy, got some endorsement deals of his own, and can now afford to support himself regardless of his future in the NBA.

People act in their own rational self-interest. Athletes are people, too.

The first is a well-reasoned piece on the decision by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association to suspend discussions on its proposed governance restructuring. As I've said in the past, critics of this proposal are missing the big picture, and as Beef magazine writer Troy Marshall puts it, "It’s way past time that we demand more and let it be known that this type of nonsense is beyond counterproductive; it’s harmful to our very survival."

Marshall's comments stem from what he calls a "meaningless" decision by the Executive Committee of the Cattlemen's Beef Board to call for a complete separation between NCBA and the Federation of State Beef Councils. "This is the kind of nonsense the industry can no longer afford. The decision was meaningless in that this was in response to NCBA’s governance and structural rule changes that would have allowed federation members to vote on certain policy issues," Marshall writes. "Never once had it been proposed that checkoff dollars would be used on policy issues."

The second item for your consideration is an article from the Atlantic suggesting that our conventional wisdom that "fat equals flavor" in beef is erroneous. Making some sound scientific observations regarding the role of phospholipids in beef flavor, freelancer Mark Schatzker nonetheless goes off the deep end in his criticism of traditional grain-fed beef: "Now we fatten cattle in feedlots on steamed, flaked corn and bulk them up with hormones, antibiotics, and drugs. The USDA asked for fat, and the industry has become exceedingly good at giving it to them. Beef today looks good, but it doesn't have much flavor."

Blaming the USDA grading system for our perspective on the role of intramuscular fat in making our steaks juicy, tender, and flavorful, the writer spends the better part of the article dissecting thirty-year old research conducted in England on the role of trim and marbling on flavor, versus "invisible fats" known as phospholipids. Based on that single study, the author concludes that we're all wrong about where flavor comes from, and if we'd just consume locally raised grass-fed beef, we'd be enjoying the most wonderful steaks ever!

The author, however, takes exactly three lines to obfuscate the entire point of his article: "Before anyone runs out and declare war on marbling, however, keep in mind that fat isn't the enemy of a good steak, either. It may not add much in the way of beefy flavor, but it does make a steak richer, smoother, and juicier. So as far as that lean piece of venison goes, I suggest frying it in butter." In other words, phospholipids are critical to flavor, but without the marbling he criticized throughout the piece, we'd be eating really flavorful shoe leather.

Why Don't I Care About Soccer? Believe it or not, that's not a rhetorical question. I'm genuinely confused as to why I don't care much about soccer in general, MLS at all, or the World Cup in specific. I'm somewhat surprised by this given that I work in a city with a great professional soccer team that won the MLS in fairly recent memory, that team has a great venue that is terribly convenient for me to attend, and the single game (or is it match?) I attended was extremely enjoyable.

Apparently, however, I'm not alone. As Matthew Philbin points out at NewsBusters, Americans by and large don't care one way or another about soccer. It isn't necessarily that we dislike the sport, but that it simply isn't part of our collective culture the way baseball, football, and basketball are.

While even extremely successful sports like golf and tennis don't enjoy the general American enthusiasm of the "big three," soccer is clearly the low man on the totem pole when it comes to major organized sports in this country.

World Cup fever, however, has the media in "missionary" mode once again, as Philbin notes, "every four years they strive to bring the good news of "the beautiful game" to the ignorant American masses."

It drives me nuts that literally everything in our society has a political connotation, but I do find Philbin's analysis intriguing. I welcome your thoughts.

I am, by the way, working to organize a Crew game with my friends... It's a good time.

Sarah Palin's Boobs Are in the News... While contemplating the physical attributes of the hottest Governor ever elected in Alaska (or most other states, for that matter) isn't something that disturbs me in itself, I do find it next to infuriating that manufactured gossip alleging she acquired breast augmentation passes as political discourse today.

Let's compare and contrast. From RedState's Tabitha Hale: Palin is significant because she represents a large portion of the [Tea Party/Conservative] movement. In many cases, she still has enough pull with the base to make them rethink their candidate selection. She’s also proven that she knows how to pick a winner. It’s just a matter of whether or not her devotion lies to paying back political favors or standing up for the grassroots - there’s no denying that she’s got power.

On the other hand, here's Lauren Beckham Falcone at the Boston Herald: "Alaska’s former governor sported more Northern Exposure than usual at the Belmont Stakes race this weekend, sending the blogosphere into a tizzy, wondering whether Palin is exercising a woman’s right to (bigger) boobs.

I'm not sure I even need to comment further...

Despite $10 Million, Lincoln Hangs On... Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark), Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, scratched out a victory in a close primary run-off. This is significant for two reasons: first, because the powerful Labor Unions who control the Democratic party dumped $10 million in a failed bid to unseat her for standing up to them during her tenure.

From NewsMax: "To use $10 million during a recession on beating up their own rather than trying to save the endangered makes no earthly sense," said Doug Schoen, a Democratic political consultant.

But union leaders insisted Wednesday that forcing Lincoln into a runoff and coming within a few thousand votes of unseating her had achieved their goal — getting other wayward Democrats to think twice before crossing labor.

"If working families were able to accomplish this in Arkansas, imagine what they can achieve in other states," said AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka.

Schoen is right. Americans should note that workers represented by groups like the AFL-CIO spend a significant portion of their wage to belong to a Union ostensibly so their rights as workers are protected. Instead, those dollars are being, to quote one senior White House aide "flushed down the toilet on a pointless exercise." The aide told Politico that "If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country, that could have made a real difference in November." In a story at the American Spectator, an AFL spokesman shot back, "labor isn't an arm of the Democratic Party."

Clearly Union leaders presumed the Democratic Party was an arm of Big Labor.

The second reason this is important is even more important. Blanche Lincoln should be in the United States Senate. While I may not agree with all of her policies, she represents the people who elected her well, respecting their will and wishes at the displeasure of the party apparatus and special interests like Big Labor. She represents the class of Statesmen sorely lacking in modern politics.

FTC Warning About Gulf Oil Scams... And I'm not talking about the Katrina-esqe incompetence of the Federal Government in dealing with the situation. The Federal Trade Commission warns that "scammers will likely use e-mails, websites, door-to-door collections, flyers, mailings and telephone calls to solicit money by claiming they’re raising money for environmental causes or offering fraudulent services related to the oil spill."

Keep that in mind when HSUS claims to need your money to "save the animals in the gulf..." After all, they've done it before...

Okay, so that should get your engine running this morning. Looking forward to your thoughts.

With the nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagen to the United States Supreme Court, the nation's top court is once again center stage in news coverage and blog chatter. Here are a few links, both on topic and off:

There is no "Diversity" on the Court: Obama's two picks to the court have been hailed for paying homage to the Gods of "diversity," with Sotomayor getting bonus points for being female AND Puerto Rican, and Kagen getting points for being female AND allegedly a closet Lesbian (heavy emphasis on allegedly).

The problem with claiming diversity on the Court, at least beyond the liberal love for gender and racial "equality," is that there is, in the most important sense - intellectually - little to no diversity. The Weekly Standard shares that:

In terms of undergraduate colleges, five of the nine attended Ivy League institutions (Princeton, Harvard, and Cornell), and two attended Stanford University. The two outliers are Scalia and Thomas who (as Catholics) attended Georgetown University and Holy Cross (respectively).

With respect to law schools, the unrepresentative character of the Court is even more pronounced. Eight of the nine justices (including Kagan) attended either Harvard or Yale Law Schools; the ninth—Ginsburg—attended Columbia. Just three Ivy League law schools have supplied the legal education of the entire Supreme Court.

In terms of regional representation, the current Court (again with Kagan included) is composed of eight members from northeastern states and a single member (Kennedy) from California. Three of the nine members—Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan—were born and raised in New York City, and two (Scalia and Alito) hail from nearby New Jersey. Thomas grew up in Georgia and Roberts in Indiana, but both attended school in the Northeast and embarked on legal careers there as adults. Aside from these childhood attachments, the vast interior of the country is unrepresented on the Court.

Nor is there much religious diversity on the Court as six members are Roman Catholics and three are Jewish...With the retirement of John Paul Stevens, there are no longer any Protestants on the Court, even though 70 percent of Americans are associated with Protestant churches of various kinds.

Read the full article and check out the handy chart. The writer points out that there is no public-school representation on the court whatsoever, especially troubling since over 70 percent of the populace attended a public university or college.

Women Will Rule the Court: Law scholar and blogger supreme Ann Althouse predicts that soon the Supreme Court will shift from a 6-3 male to female ratio to one in which the fairer sex holds a permanent majority on the bench. Fascinating hypothesis, and one that makes complete sense.

Michael Schaivo is an Evil Man: Econ blogger Tom Blumer has the latest on the tragic tale of Terri Schindler Schaivo, and how even after her deadbeat husband succeeded in killing her for his own nefarious ends, the SOB continue to torture and torment her bereaved family. This man deserves everything coming to him in the afterlife. It can't be anything good.

Obama Can't Work an iPod?: Speaking of the BizzyBlog, Blumer also has some comments on President Obama's admission that he is technologically illiterate. Making the point that Obama's admission would have gotten much different press had it come from George W. Bush given the infamous "grocery scanner" canard, Blumer notes the mysterious absence of any critical press on this issue. Personally I think Obama was using this line to get some chuckles from the grads in the audience, because I seem to remember no shortage of stories during the campaign about stuff like "what's on Barack's iPod."

Either way, after watching Rod Blagojevich on The Celebrity Apprentice, I assume politicians in general aren't checking their own emails or jockeying their own Blackberrys. My old friend Scott McKain has some additional commentary on the Obama iPod flap here.

In Wayne's Own Words; Using Puppies to Filch Your Funds: It's well-known that Wayne Pacelle's Activist ATM the Humane Society (in name only) of the United States uses images of neglected dogs and cats to finance a radical vegan agenda driven by an extensive lobbying and political organization. Once again underscoring that understanding is the release this week of H$U$' "Annual Report." Not an official financial statement or disclosure, this colorful piece of puffy propaganda is used by the H$U$' cons to insert their sticky fingers further in the pockets of hapless do-gooders unaware of the organization's true intentions. Note the imaging on Wayne's blog, and on the report itself: almost all dogs and cats...

And yet, when you read Wayne's own words, you see the clear admission of a radical political agenda:

In 2009, as you’ll read in this annual report, our Emergency Services responders undertook a remarkable array of hands-on interventions, rescuing more than 10,000 animals from puppy mills, animal fighting pits, hoarding operations, and natural disasters. Our staff and volunteer veterinarians provided treatments and sterilizations for thousands of dogs and cats—from the most remote Indian reservations in the United States to the streets of the Himalayan nation of Bhutan. And with our five direct care centers—operating from Cape Cod to San Diego—we provided treatments, safe haven, adoption, or release back into the wild for nearly 16,000 creatures whose fortunes ultimately led them into our healing and protective arms.

Yet if we only provided direct care and services, we’d fail our animal friends. Countless animals are in crisis, and we could never intervene to help all of them. If we undertook only that work, we’d just be addressing symptoms. It’s our primary goal at The HSUS to diagnose the problems that animals face, and then to achieve reforms so that cruelty is prevented in the first place. In short, we work to strike at root causes to secure lasting change.

For instance, we raided 16 puppy mills in 2009 and saved more than 3,000 dogs in the process. But even if we managed to double or quadruple the number of raids, that would not be enough to solve the broader problem. We estimate there are more than 10,000 mills in the United States, and that’s why it’s critical that we pass laws to crack down on these operations and also raise awareness with consumers so they don’t purchase dogs from the puppy mill supply chain. In 2009, we helped pass 10 new state laws to address the cruelty of puppy mills, and dozens have already been shuttered as a result of our ongoing legislative work. We’ve now taken the steps needed to push ahead an anti-puppy mill ballot initiative for 2010 in Missouri; that state alone is estimated to host perhaps as many as 3,000 breeding operations and to produce nearly 40 percent of all dogs in the pet trade. By working to pass a ballot initiative there, we can achieve with a single policy reform something more significant and enduring than all of our raids combined.

Similarly, billions of animals are at risk on factory farms. Rescuing animals from these situations might help those individual creatures, but it could not possibly begin to turn around this vast and almost overwhelming problem. Instead, we are working for fundamental reforms. In 2009, we passed legislation in California to ban tail docking, and in Michigan, we passed legislation to phase out the worst confinement practices for veal calves, breeding sows, and laying hens. We also worked to get major corporations like Wendy’s and Au Bon Pain to institute more humane purchasing practices, shifting the marketplace and compelling factory farmers to change their ways. Our undercover investigations expose awful cruelty at factory farms and slaughterhouses and shut down the worst operators, pulling back the curtain on the endemic cruelty in industrialized agribusiness and setting the stage for broader reform.

To paraphrase: We're all about saving the animals, but our hundreds of millions of dollars are better spent hiring dozens of lawyers, engaging in endless lobbying of state and federal legislators, and focusing on running expensive political campaigns.

In the end, it's not about the animals for H$U$ anymore. It's about wielding unchecked political power.